The best advice John Haaga, senior official at the National Institute on Aging, has is “Take a lot of long walks and have a lot of daughters and daughters-in-law.” It is no secret that family and staying active is valuable at any age, but these two things become particularly important as we age. This article lays out facts and figures as far as what it looks like to have a family member in a nursing home. We want to help you prevent those rising costs of nursing homes and assisted living facilities through having technology in your loved one’s home.

Check out what else Jim Landers of the Dallas News has to say about aging in place, living independently and what it looks like to have a loved one who is aging in this economy.

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WASHINGTON — John Haaga, a senior official at the National Institute on Aging, offers a disquieting thought for baby boomers heading into their later years.

“The best advice we can give people for old age is ‘Take a lot of long walks and have a lot of daughters and daughters-in-law.’”

Unless a retiring couple has hundreds of thousands of dollars saved for health care, exercise and family caregivers could be vitally important.

A new report from the Institute on Aging, “65+ in the United States: 2010” (census. gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p23-212.pdf), estimates a couple retiring in 2010 needed $190,000 for out-of-pocket care. If one of them needs nursing home care, it took $260,000 in savings. This is money required to pay bills that exceed the health coverage of Medicare.

Many Americans heading into old age don’t have that kind of money.

Read the full article here.